That idea, however, was quickly dismissed by Ji Mingyu.

“What beauty hasn’t our Ninth Master seen? Plenty of women throw themselves at him on purpose — how could he possibly fall for some green little girl?”

Even so, over this stretch of time, even Ji Mingyu could tell that Ninth Master’s attitude toward Miss Jiu’er really was different.

But he simply refused to believe it. Perhaps Ninth Master just saw her as a younger sibling.

Perhaps it was only because Miss Jiu’er was the youngest in the group, so he favored her and treated her a little more warmly.

Perhaps…

Ji Mingyu ran out of excuses.

Since when had their Ninth Master become so easygoing and warm?

Not that long ago, he had been an untouchable, almost devilish figure… well, maybe that was putting it a bit too strongly.

But not far off, either…

“Jiu’er does look a bit young, but she’s twenty-two — at least she’s not a minor. Besides, our Ninth Master is only twenty-eight himself, not exactly old, is he?”

A six-year gap — that wasn’t too much, was it?

Qin Fei thought it over and still shook his head. “No way…”

“You think it’s impossible too, huh?”

“Right, no way. Jiu’er’s just a little kid — she doesn’t match Ninth Master’s vibe at all.”

More importantly, if Ninth Master really did take a liking to Jiu’er, and Jiu’er became his woman, where would he ever find the nerve to chat and joke around with her to pass the time?

Then the whole journey would be unbearably boring, wouldn’t it?

Right, right, right, impossible — there was no way Ninth Master could have taken a liking to Jiu’er!

“You’re overthinking it. She probably just got too close to him while fleeing for her life, and Ninth Master scolded her for it.”

Their Ninth Master, after all, hated being touched by women more than anything.

“Is that really it?” This time, even Ji Mingyu couldn’t quite see through it.

Qin Fei rolled his eyes at him. “You’re Ninth Master’s top aide — if you don’t know, why are you asking me?”

In any case, Jiu’er was still just Jiu’er — not anyone’s woman!

Otherwise, he’d feel a little bittersweet about it…

Two more days passed, and before long, it was the third night.

“Ninth Master, there’s basically no signal out here.” Ji Mingyu came in holding his phone.

A’Ke was carrying a signal booster with him, but even that couldn’t pick up a single bar out here.

They had lost contact with the archaeological team two days ago, and now even the reserve team was unreachable.

If they kept going, they’d be stepping fully into an era with no signal at all — a truly primitive stretch. Not even phone calls would get through.

“One of the radios is broken,” Ji Mingyu said, tallying up their supplies and reporting to Lu Beicheng one by one.

“A’Ke has three more, I’ll bring one over to Miss Jiu’er in a bit. But the signal tower A’Ke’s carrying can only connect us internally, among ourselves.”

In other words, they had a closed internal communication system — the few of them could reach each other, but no one outside the group could reach them at all.

“Also, A’Ke detected something strange about the ruins of Ying’an City — every now and then, some kind of electrical pulse interferes with the signal tower.”

Lu Beicheng’s eyes darkened slightly.

An ancient imperial city ruin giving off a pulse signal — that shouldn’t be possible at all.

“It seems someone has already entered Ying’an City before us.”

“Wouldn’t that put the archaeological team in danger?” If it was tomb raiders, those people would kill for money without hesitation!

Given they were already committing a crime to begin with!

“Ninth Master, even though we have our own people on the archaeological team, most of the others haven’t had any professional training. If they run into tomb raiders, it could be very dangerous!”